Snowbirding 2022: Lake Mead and Boulder City

A blog post with a vlog post.

In an effort to minimize the ums and uhs of my on-the-fly narration, for this video about last week’s trip to St Thomas Overlook, Stewart Point, Henderson/Las Vegas, and Boulder City, I wrote a script and just read it into my computer. Since I had the script, I figured I may as well turn it into a blog post, too. There are some photos here but the video has a lot more photos, maps and, well, videos.

Here’s the video:


And now here’s the blog post.


After leaving Valley of Fire State Park, we did a little exploring in the Overton Arm area of Lake Mead. We started off with a drive down a narrow, unpaved road to the St Thomas townsite overlook. St Thomas used to be under water. Now that water levels are so low, the ruins of the town are visible again. There’s a three mile loop hike to get down there from the overlook, but I didn’t go. I didn’t take any photos from the overlook, either, although I did see some of the ruins with binoculars.


Here’s the sign at the overlook for St. Thomas Point. YOu couldn’t really see any of the town without either making the 3-mile hike or using binoculars.

After that, I made a quick trip back to Overton to buy some fixit supplies and a few grocery items. Then back into the park.


Blue Point Spring was very disappointing. Rogers Spring, a bit farther down the road, is supposed to be a lot nicer.

We made a quick stop with a short hike at Blue Point Spring. It was a depressing little hike that led to a gurgling pipe with water flowing into a narrow creek that dried up only a few dozen feet away. Not recommended.

Then down the road to Stewarts Point, our overnight destination. This was down a long, partially paved road. I met a ranger along the way and he gave me all kinds of information about the area, including a park map and some information about water flows in the lake. He told me I could park anywhere down there but warned me not to get too close to the water because the ground there could be soft.

When I got out there, I discovered at least a dozen other RVers parked all over the place. There was plenty of room to find a spot away from them all. I packed into a spot at the edge of a steep drop off with the back of my camper facing the lake so I’d have a good view.


The view out the back of my camper wasn’t too shabby.


An interesting mineral was growing in cracks in the clay-like mud.

After I’d set up the camper, I made lunch, grabbed some snacks for me and my pups, and headed down to the lake. We spent some time having lunch along the water and watching water birds. I discovered some sort of mineral growing in cracks of the clay-like mud at and in the water; some Twitter friends later identified it as gypsum. I found traces of burros in the area but we never saw any. We went back up to the camper and spent the rest of the day just relaxing. We had a nice sunset.

I was still having battery issues so I left the heat off overnight, hoping to be able to turn it on in the morning. But in the morning, with the temperature around 30°F outside, my batteries were dead again. Rather than deal with the generator, I made coffee in a travel mug, broke camp, and headed out as soon as it was light enough to see.


Don’t tell anyone, but I sent up the drone for a few minutes around sunset to get this shot of my campsite from the air.

The rest of the morning was spent in Henderson and Las Vegas troubleshooting and ultimately fixing that battery problem. I cover it in detail in my blog; you can find a link in the video description.

When that was done, I treated myself to a nice lunch in Boulder City. I felt I deserved it.

Then my pups and I took my bike and their trailer on the Historic Railroad Trail that runs from the Lake Mead Visitor Center to the Dam. It was surprisingly chilly and there was just enough wind to keep the ride from being pleasant. I stopped for some photos of the lake that showed how far the water level had come down since the highest levels back in the 1980s. Instead of turning around after the last tunnel, I kept on the steep gravel trail down toward the dam. This turned out to be ultimately disappointing since I couldn’t easily get close to the dam with my bicycle and I didn’t want to leave it locked up out of sight for too long. We wound up coming back along the road, which was a lot easier than pedaling uphill in gravel, even with electric assist.


This shot of the marina gives you a pretty good idea of how far down the water level has come; most of those islands were submerged in the 1980s.

By that time, I felt done for the day. I packed up the bike and trailer, put my pups back into the truck, and left Boulder City for our next destination: Willow Beach Campground on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. I’ll tell you more about that in the next video.

Snowbirding 2021: A Visit to Slab City

I finally get to see a place I’ve heard about numerous times and always wondered about.

I can’t remember exactly when I heard about Slab City, CA. I suspect it was about five years ago when I started visiting the Holtville Hot Springs and listening to the other RVers talk there about free places to camp.

Slab City on Wikipedia

Per Wikipedia, Slab City,

also called The Slabs, is an unincorporated, off-the-grid squatter community consisting largely of snowbirds in the Salton Trough area of the Sonoran Desert, in Imperial County, California. It took its name from concrete slabs that remained after the World War II Marine Corps Camp Dunlap training camp was torn down. Slab city is known for lifestyle that contradicts ordinary civilized lifestyle.

The rest of the Wikipedia entry is extremely informative (and I encourage you to read it), but appears to have been written mostly around 1990 and then edited to add information in 2020. (The editor in me would love to go into that entry and clean it up, but I’ll let experts tackle it.) There are photos, but I suspected that none would do it justice and I wound up being right.

The Trip

I’ve been wanting to check it out for myself for a few years. I decided to make it one of my goals for this year. But I wasn’t interested in dragging all my RVing gear out there, possibly to find a place where I wouldn’t want to camp. I wanted to make it a day trip from my campsite on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. It would be a roughly 2-1/2 hour drive each way.

Sometimes the only thing that prevents me from doing something I genuinely do want to do is motivation. I lacked motivation until this week. That’s when I happened to mention it to a new friend of mine, Bill, who is a full-time RVer. He very unexpectedly said he was interested in checking it out, too. And since he was camped out nearly halfway between my site and Slab City, it made sense for me to pick him up along the way if we did it before he moved on.

I set the date for Wednesday, which was the day after we spoke about it. There was a big holiday weekend coming up and I wanted to stick around near camp. A lot of crazies come out here with their off-road vehicles and I just felt the need to stay where I could keep an eye on things. I’m not a big fan of going out on weekends anyway, mostly because of the greater potential for crowds at my destination. One of the great things about my lifestyle is that I can go places midweek, when there are fewer people around.

That’s why I was in my truck at 8 AM on Wednesday morning with my pups, headed away from camp. I wanted to fill my truck with fuel before going into California — diesel (and other fuel, I guess) is about $1 cheaper per gallon in Arizona than California and with a 30 gallon tank that was about half full, that difference quickly turned into lunch money. I drove up to my favorite cheap gas station on my side of the river, topped off the tank, bought a pack of Oreos with a pint of milk, and set off westbound on I-10.

I was meeting Bill at Desert Center, a little over an hour west of the Colorado River. There was very little traffic, and I could cruise at or around the speed limit of 70 MPH. The stretch of I-10 between Blythe, CA on the Colorado River and Desert Center is pretty dull. A lot of empty desert, some of which has been recently filled in with huge solar energy farms. I listened to an audio book along the way and the time passed quickly. I got off the exit and rolled into the armpit of California that is the town of Desert Center.

Desert Center
Shot from a trash-strewn vacant lot near the I-10 freeway exit, this view of Desert Center, CA is what greets folks who go there.

I cannot begin to describe how trashy the place is. It’s mostly empty lots and deserted, vandalized, graffiti-painted buildings. There’s trash and broken glass everywhere. A few semis with trailers were parked in various places, engines running; I guess this is an overnight stop for some truckers. I didn’t see any sign of current habitation, which is probably a good thing. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually living there.

I arrived early, of course, and had to wait for Bill, which I didn’t mind. I let the pups out to walk around the sandy lot I’d parked in and had to follow them around to make sure they didn’t step in or try to eat anything disgusting. We wound up waiting in the truck, windows open on the warm morning. But the more I looked around, I the less I liked the idea of Bill parking his custom Mercedes Sprinter van anywhere in the area for the day.

I told him that when he arrived. He looked around and agreed. He told me it had been broken into before and it was very upsetting.

I suggested Chiriaco Summit, a busier exit on the freeway that actually had businesses in operation. It was 19 miles farther in the direction we had to go anyway. He agreed and followed me.

I knew Chiriaco Summit from flying into its tiny airport, visiting the Patton Tank Museum there, and stopping for a bite to eat at Foster’s Freeze. As I pulled in, I realized that the little “town” had grown. There were additional restaurants and a handful of other businesses. Foster’s was now inside the big gas station. There was plenty of parking that would be out of the way yet close enough to activity to not draw attention. The town was all business and neat — a huge difference from Desert Center.

He parked, we went inside the gas station to use the restroom, and Bill bought a cup of coffee for the road. Then we were on our way.

I missed the exit for Box Canyon Road mostly because I was looking north. I was distracted by the Cottonwood Springs Road entrance into Joshua Tree National Park, with lots of RVs camping out in the desert, likely just outside of park boundaries. I never realized there was a road that went south there until I’d passed the exit. Duh. The next exit was six miles west and I made my U-turn there, thus adding 12 miles to the drive.

Box Canyon Road is a great drive on a decently paved road down a wide canyon that I would not want to be stuck in during heavy rain. There were a few folks camped out in there and a few others driving the same direction we were. After a while coasting downhill on the gently curving road, we got a glimpse of the Salton Sea stretched out before us in the distance. Then the winding canyon road leveled out and opened into blocks of farmland.

We saw some very neglected grape vines, lemon trees, pepper plants ready to be harvested, and a bunch of other veggies we couldn’t easily identify. GoogleMaps directed us to make a few turns before dumping us on Route 111, Grapefruit Boulevard. It should have been called Palm Highway there because it was mostly lined with date palms for a while. Then those ended abruptly and we were in the mostly barren desert on the east shore of Salton Sea.

This is not an attractive area of desert. There isn’t much vegetation and anything that was planted and neglected — think mostly palm trees — are dead or dying. Yes, the Salton Sea sparkles just off to the west and there are snow-capped mountains beyond Palm Springs even farther west than that. But the terrain is mostly a light tan color with the occasional tiny settlement, park, or abandoned, vandalized, and grafittied building hinting at past when the area had something to brag about.

Bombay Beach

Slab City turned out to be a lot farther south than I thought. Along the way we passed the Salton Sea State Park and its campgrounds, which turned out to be closed for COVID, and a settlement boasting hot springs off to the east.

Bombay Beach Art
Is this the “Cessna Art” I was supposed to find at Bombay Beach? Is this a Cessna?

We eventually reached Bombay Beach, 223 feet below sea level, with a population 415. I’d been there before and hadn’t been impressed, but a Twitter friend urged me to revisit it, telling me there was some sort of Cessna artwork I needed to see. We drove through, spending a brief time on the sea side of the dike wall before completing a circle of the town. This sentence from Wikipedia sums it up perfectly:

A visitor in 2019 wrote that there were many “discarded homes and trailers long-since abandoned” and that many of the buildings were “windowless husks blanketed in graffiti, surrounded by broken furniture and rubble.”

Basically, the place looks like the ruins of a very poor community, long since vandalized, with a handful of occupied homes and a mildly interesting collection of very large artwork made mostly from junk. It’s a depressing place and I honestly can’t imagine what it must be like to live there.

We got back on the road and continued south.

Slab City

Welcome to Slab City
The obligatory photo of the Slab City Welcome sign.

The turn for Slab City was the Main Street for Niland, CA. Although I’d expected it to be a sort of remote place up in the foothills of the mountains beyond, it was actually spread out just a few miles from town. The absolute junkiness of the place hit me immediately. There were all kinds of broken and abandoned RVs and other vehicles, as well as broken and occupied RVs and other vehicles. The more we drove the more trash and decrepitude we saw.

Truck at Salvation Mountain
Part of the art (or “art”) installation at Salvation Mountain.

Salvation Mountain, a man-made hill painted with latex paint which had been the life’s work of a deceased resident, was the first of the art installations. Other art was more like “art.” I drove slowly through the area on what seemed like a main road while we stared at the mess around us. Yes, people lived there. There were RVs and mobile homes and shacks and even a few decent buildings. There were street signs and house numbers. There were campgrounds, one of which was hosting one of those mega-motorhomes that sell for about $750K. There was a library that was closed. There was a business at East Jesus that was closed. There was a property that used the burned out shells of RVs as a sort of fence line. The farther we got from the main area of the community, the more trash there was scattered out in the desert.

Salvation Mountain
Salvation Mountain is the primary point of interest in Slab City. Read about it on Wikipedia.

East Jesus Plane Art
A business at the end of the road to East Jesus was closed due to COVID.

I said I’d take pictures, but I took very few. The above shots are about it. Honestly, there wasn’t much I wanted a picture of.

We followed a sign for Slab LOW, not knowing what it was, and eventually arrived there. It looked like a camping area with a few buildings. Signs said they welcomed members of WIN, LOW, and Escapees — three RVer clubs. (I belong to WIN, Bill belongs to Escapees.) I stopped the truck and we got out to stretch our legs and let the pups run around. There was a single motorhome parked there and while we gave the dogs water — Rosie had puked in the truck; she still gets carsick once in a while — a man came out. Soon we were chatting with him. He lived there full time. He said the place we were at was closing and relocating elsewhere. He told us where but we never found it. Did it matter? No.

There were actually quite a few people living in the area — even if just temporarily. It looked to me as if you could camp for any length of time just about anywhere. But the vibe was about the same — at least to me — as it was at Bombay Beach. It was the ruins of something and no amount of art or “art” could hide it. Squatting on land that no one cared about was a cheap and easy way to live, but I know I could never live like that. Honestly, I’d have trouble even spending a day or two there. Too much trash. A cleanup crew could spend a year filling 30-gallon trash bags and no one would know the difference.

We didn’t stay long. And I have to admit that although Slab City sort of met my expectations, I was disappointed. I was hoping it was something better. Something more interesting. Something I’d like to stay and explore. It wasn’t. It was just a squatter community out in the desert, surrounded by decades of trash.

Lunch, the Fountain of Youth, and a Walk on the Beach

We stopped for lunch in Niland. I’d wanted very badly to go to the Oasis Date Ranch for one of their excellent hamburgers with dates on it but their cafe was closed due to COVID. The Buckshot Cafe in Niland served Mexican and American food. The restaurant itself was closed, but they were taking to-go orders through one of the front windows. We each ordered a chicken torta and wound up eating it in the back of my truck, feeding the dogs nacho chips and french fries.

Back on the road, we turned in at the sign for the Fountain of Youth RV Resort and Spa. The WIN RV group I belong to had camped there for a week in early November, before I headed south. I wanted to see what it was like. It was a typical middle-of-the-desert RV park, filled with mobile homes, park models, and regular RVs. There was a pool, a hot spring fed spa, shuffleboard, a restaurant, and more. Everyone we saw was older than we were except the kid at the gate. The campsites were close together and there were a lot of vacancies. No Canadians this year.

We checked out another RV resort with spa nearby. It was a lot smaller, more casual, and cheaper. Bill was disappointed that although they offered day use options for the spa facilities, clothing was required.

Our last stop in the valley was at a campground along the shore of Salton Sea. I’d stayed there about four years before. I wanted to show Bill the beach, which had been covered with giant barnacles and dead fish back then. The campground was closed, but we parked across the road and walked over. We climbed down an embankment and walked right up to the short. The barnacles were smaller and there were no dead fish.

Salton Sea Beach
The beach at Salton Sea. Palm Springs lies at the base of the snow-capped mountain dead center in this shot.

The Drive Back to Camp

Bill used a map app on his phone to guide me back to Box Canyon Road and we climbed up the wide canyon to the I-10 freeway. From there, it was a short drive to Chiriaco Summit. I took my pups for a quick walk with Bill. Then we said our goodbyes and he left to go to camp while I went into Foster’s Freeze for a hot fudge sundae.

I passed Bill on the road right before reaching Desert Center. He’d told me his campsite south of there was dead quiet and pitch black dark. Sounded good to me. My site would not be quiet with all the yahoos in from Phoenix with their ATVs for the long weekend, but I had a good, private camp and wasn’t ready to move. Yet.

I finished listening to the recorded book I’d been listening to along the way. I got back to camp just as the sun set over California.

If I had a bucket list, I could cross off Slab City.

Snowbirding 2020: More Power!

Adding more solar power to my camping setup.

Why I don’t have solar at home.

A lot of people ask me why I don’t have solar panels on my enormous roof — it’s about 3000 square feet — at home. After all, central Washington state is dry and desert-like, with sunshine at least 300 days a year.

What a lot of people don’t know, however, is that Chelan County, where I live, is completely dialed in with renewable energy from wind and hydroelectric power. We have extremely cheap power — 3.22¢/kWh, which is 72.9% less than the national average rate of 11.88¢/kWh (per ElectricityLocal.com) — and my monthly electric bills seldom rise above $50 in any month, no matter how much heating or cooling I use in my all-electric home. It would take decades for me to recoup the cost of any solar setup at home. And, because the power I get is mostly from renewable sources, it’s pretty much guilt free.

I have always been a huge proponent of solar power for off-the-grid camping (and life in general). To that end, I’ve invested in solar panels for most of the RV’s I’ve owned, including my current truck camper, “T2.”

When I had my previous truck camper, “the Turtleback”, I thought a portable panel was the way to go. Zamp made foldable panels with a tightly fitting semi-hard case for safe transit and, back in 2016 (I think), I bought a 160 watt setup and had a simple plug socket installed on the outside of the Turtleback’s battery compartment for easy hookup. It worked like a charm.

What I wasn’t thinking about was the fact that the panels were large and heavy and had to be stowed someplace in transit. After I downsized from the Turtleback to T2 (which I also had that handy plug socket installed on), I decided to install 200 watts of solar on T2’s roof. No more dragging around those big panels.

Of course, I didn’t sell them. I keep everything. 🙄

How I Use Solar

I should make it clear here that my solar setup has always been solely to keep my camper’s batteries fully charged when I’m not hooked up to a power source. I do a lot of off-the-grid “dry camping” and if I don’t charge the batteries I will eventually run out of power. (Duh.) I don’t have an inverter to provide alternating current (AC) power for device like my camper’s microwave or even my laptop charger. Everything runs off direct current (DC) power or propane.

I should also mention that I’m not a complete idiot and I also travel with a 2KW generator that does provide AC power. Unlike a lot of other off-the-grid campers, however, I don’t like to run it because I don’t like to listen to it. It’s a Honda and it’s quiet, but it’s a lot more quiet when it’s turned off. I wish other RVers would turn off their f*cking televisions (and generators) and enjoy the outdoors. If they want to spend their time watching television, they could stay home or park in a KOA.

Don’t get me started.

Another Solar Setup?

Time went on. My needs changed. This year, I’m traveling with a cargo trailer — “Lily Rose” (long story) — that I’ve got set up as a mobile jewelry shop. The trailer has a lockable toolbox on the front near the hitch and I thought that would be perfect for installing a few batteries, keeping them charged with the Zamp panels, and connecting them to an inverter I could use to get AC power into the trailer or for use with T2. So when I packed Lily Rose for my trip south, I packed the Zamp panels. I figured I’d get price quotes at the two Quartzsite solar dealers when I got there.

I wound up visiting just one of the two dealers. His price quote was enough to convince me that my setup was wishful thinking. Sure, they could build me a system with 4 6-volt lithium batteries, a 2kw pure sine wave inverter, and the receptacle for my existing Zamp solar panels. All it would cost would be about $4,500.

Ouch! That’s more than I spent to buy Lily Rose! My budget was about 1/4 of that so it just wasn’t going to happen. No sense in getting another quote; it probably wouldn’t be much less — if it was less.

Use What You’ve Got

So there I was in Arizona with an extra solar panel setup. What was I to do?

Use it, of course. I’m at my campsite for more than two weeks. I found a mostly sunny spot and hooked up the Zamp to T2. Despite the short winter days and increased shade in our tight campsite, I’m keeping my batteries fully charged every day.

Zamp Solar Panels
My Zamp solar panels. They fold in half; the solar controller is built into a panel that hangs behind it. The legs to angle it toward the sun are attached. It’s a nice setup. Also in the photo: my electric assist bike and a 2 gallon fuel container for my generator. Our site is surrounded by 15+ foot tall bamboo which limits the amount of direct sunlight we get; you can see the shadows, too.

No sense in not taking advantage of every resource I have to collect power.